| "Death Cab For Cutie" | |
|---|---|
| Song by Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band | |
| from the album Gorilla | |
| Released | October 1967 |
| Genre | |
| Length | 2:56 |
| Label | Liberty Records BGO Records (Reissue) |
| Songwriter(s) | Vivian Stanshall and Neil Innes |
| Producer(s) | Gerry Bron, Lyn Birkbeck |
"Death Cab for Cutie" is a song composed by Vivian Stanshall and Neil Innes and performed by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. It was included on their 1967 album Gorilla .
Innes's inspiration for the song was the title of a story in an old American pulp fiction crime magazine he came across at a street market. [1] Stanshall's primary contribution was to shape "Death Cab for Cutie" as a parody of Elvis Presley (notably Presley's 1957 hit "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear"), and he sang it as such, with undertones of 1950s doo-wop. In the style of several early teenage tragedy songs, such as "Teen Angel", it tells a story of youthful angst. "Cutie", who goes out on the town against her lover's wishes ("Last night Cutie caught a cab, uhuh-huh ..."), is killed when the taxicab she is in runs a red light and crashes. In the last line of the chorus, the narrator notes that 'someone' is going to make Cutie pay her fare -- i.e., end up dead.
The song became one of the Bonzo Dog Band's better-known numbers when it was featured in the Beatles' 1967 television film Magical Mystery Tour . Performed in a stage routine by the Bonzos, it accompanied a striptease act, performed by Jan Carson of the Raymond Revuebar, who was enthusiastically ogled by club customers including John Lennon and George Harrison. Paul McCartney had coaxed Stanshall into wearing a pink chiffon scarf to look more "trendy". [2]
The Bonzo Dog Band performed the song in a 1967 episode of the TV series Do Not Adjust Your Set , in which the band is gushingly introduced by Michael Palin (who gets the title wrong). The band appeared regularly on the show—a so-called children's programme which featured Palin, Eric Idle and other later-famous comedians.
The song is referenced on the 1984 Culture Club album Waking Up with the House on Fire , in the song "Crime Time", which is a throwback to the early rock 'n' roll sound.[ citation needed ]
The title also occurs in Richard Hoggart's 1957 book The Uses of Literacy , a pioneering work in the cultural studies field that discusses British popular culture. In Chapter 8, "The Newer Mass Art: Sex in Shiny Packets", under part C: "Sex and Violence Novels", Hoggart provides a list of "imitations" of the "terse, periodic titles" of these "American sex-novels", including "Sweetie, Take It Hot"; "The Lady Takes a Dive"; "Aim Low, Angel"; "Sweetheart, Curves Can Kill"; and "Death-Cab for Cutie".
Going further back, a 1949 detective pulp fiction novel by Hank Janson (the pen-name of English author Stephen Daniel Frances) was published in the UK with the title Slay-Ride for Cutie. [3]
Ben Gibbard used the title of the song as the name of the rock band he founded in 1997. "I would absolutely go back and give it [the band] a more obvious name," he reflected in 2011; "Thank God for Wikipedia. At least now, people don’t have to ask me where the fucking name came from every interview." [4] He later revised this stance, stating that he's "glad we have the name now, but in the early days it was tough" during a solo concert that was streamed online in March 2020. [5]